Modesty

There has been a question that has puzzled me for some time.

Why are so many religions so concerned with the behavior, dress, and morals of their women? The only two religions I can speak conclusively about are Islam and Christianity, so I shall stick with those.

In both these religions, women’s behavior, in some ways, define the virtue of the family. Islam sets the rules very strictly. A woman’s dishonor, even a woman’s momentary immodesty leads to the dishonor of her whole family. Because of this, codes for proper feminine behavior are extremely strict: clothes, occupations, speech, nothing escapes the law of order. Reading the Koran, it is easy to see how this set of behaviors came about. Three rules appear to govern the matter: 1) women are much more inclined to sin than men, 2) men are easily led into sin by women, and 3) all hope of heaven rests in one’s good deeds outweighing one’s bad deeds. Given this paradigm, it makes perfect sense that father’s and husbands guard their women’s dress and behavior ceaselessly lest a moment’s inattention damns both their daughter’s soul and the souls of the men around them. The best of the Muslim community insists on the modesty and proper behavior of their women for their own protection, honor, and care.

The best of the Christian emphasis on women’s behavior—specifically dress and modesty, I believe shares similar sentiments. Fathers love their daughters and want to spare them the humiliation of being ogled or thought little of. Yet, this simple assumption of fatherly concern does not explain the constant parade of sermons, books, articles, and even dire warnings about the never-ceasing importance of a lady’s modesty. In fact, the only Scripture that readily comments on the issue is fairly innocuous and merely forbids obvious signs of intemperance or (in context) lewd lifestyle. 1 Timothy 2:9-10 says, “Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.” Even the model of all godly womanhood, the Proverbs 31 woman has no great mention made of her modesty. Rather it says she is clothed in strength and that all her household is garbed in the finest quality.

So, if the Scripture is vague—forbidding only extravagant or obviously lewd apparel, seeming even to commend a woman who can wear quality garments, why the sovereign importance laid on the issue in Christian circles? Especially evangelical ones?

I believe there are two primary reasons.

First, Protestantism in general and the Evangelical movement in particular are reactionary churches. They see a problem in the presiding church and community and take the opposite road. In the old Baptist movement, this meant a refusal to partake in things like alcohol, dancing, smoking, or cards. In the newer Evangelical movement, it has led to an emphasis on political action, specifically defending conservative values. This success in the political realm, depends, in large scale, in proving that it works. Conservative marriage, godly education, pro-life lifestyle, all these must be proved to function not only well, but better than the prevailing opinion. All of these functions depend largely on women: they must marry sensibly and for life, they must be prepared to raise up their children godly and conservative, and they must not sleep around or especially get pregnant, if they do, they must responsibly raise these children as well. In all, Christian daughters are the showcase on which the whole depends.

Second, it is a sexually promiscuous and dangerous age. There are countless ways for even the most innocent young woman to run into trouble. Children, boys and girls, are reaching sexual maturity younger and younger. Yet, with the evangelical emphasis on responsible, godly, and model marriage Christian youth are being required to delay marriage, and therefore, sexual gratification, longer and longer. Therefore, to keep all sexual purity and to further the cause of making the proper godly society, it is imperative that women do nothing to further provocate the already much worn masculine population. The Cause of righteousness and a good society are much too important to risk trusting the youth to behave morally when Christian and Secular society collude to make it as difficult as possible—keeping sexual images and acts always before young people’s minds while simultaneously telling them that for one sensible and moral reason or another that they may not marry.

De Tocqueville best summarizes the entire question. Tocqueville makes the case that women are primarily ruled by good principles, and as such, they are the ones that make the mores (or demeanor and attitude) of the culture. Women make order, and from that order comes prosperity. Conservatives realize this fact and therefore attempt to train their young women assiduously.

Yet, it should be noted, that Tocqueville says the greatest strength of American women is not that they are so strictly reared and guarded, but they that are taught to love virtue and live prudently for its own sake. Along with this, they are taught about the dangers of the world so that they are equipped to navigate it sensibly.

Christians, especially the conservative movement, highlights women’s modesty because they cannot complete their model of holiness or their mission for the culture. They have astutely realized De Tocqueville’s principle: women shape the mores. If Christianity can train their women thoroughly in their ideal model, they will eventually win. Therefore, Christians stress modesty far beyond any biblical backing for their interest.

East Coker -- II

II

What is the late November doing
With the disturbance of the spring
And creatures of the summer heat,
And snowdrops writhing under feet
And hollyhocks that aim too high
Red into grey and tumble down
Late roses filled with early snow?
Thunder rolled by the rolling stars
Simulates triumphal cars
Deployed in constellated wars
Scorpion fights against the Sun
Until the Sun and Moon go down
Comets weep and Leonids fly
Hunt the heavens and the plains
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

That was a way of putting it - not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.
It was not (to start again) what one had expected.
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us,
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge inposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
but all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rahter of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

The houses are all gone under the sea.

The dancers are all gone under the hill.

East Coker I -- text

I

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,
And the deep lane insists on the direction
Into the village, in the electric heat
Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light
Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl.

In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

East Coker I -- Marriage and the Mystery

At the end of Burnt Norton, Eliot binds past, present, and future into one glorious Present. Yet, in the beginning of East Coker, he seems to reach a spiritual crisis—in sum, as he reconciles himself to a beginning he sees it as a death sentence. “In my beginning is my end” is the poet’s first cry, and from there he dissects the entire material world into their unbeautiful base elements.

It is a dismal picture—houses, homes, even in their genesis are reduced to dust. Old stone bows to the recycling of time and become earth, and all is reduced to “flesh, fur, and faeces.” He ends the first stanza in a depressed recitation of Ecclesiastes:

Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And a time to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots
And the shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto

It’s not pretty.

Yet, in the midst of this dim reflection on the ultimate death of all things the author has not given up hope. He faces this specter of death and works methodically towards the jobs and joys of this doomed moment. First, by breaking himself loose from the present vision he allows himself to once more hear the music of the spheres. “If you do not come to close, / On a summer midnight, you can hear the music / Of the weak pipe and the little drum.”

This music leads him to one of the most, arguably the most important human duty to the present life, “dancing around the bonfire, / The association of man and woman / in dausinge, signifying matrimonie-- / a dignified and commodious sacrament.” It is interesting to note that Eliot chose to refer to the ancient rite of marriage through the words of Edmund Spenser...a poet who in his Faerie Queen made it a point to ally the human dance of man and wife with the heavenly dance of Christ and Church. In “this two and two, necessarye coniunction,” Eliot sees both the hope for the present and the point of the future. United in earth, we live to be united with Christ. We unite in earth to show us how to unite in Christ.

This concord is born of the greatest of all celestial delights, yet is spun of the lowliest of earthly joys. Rustic joys: clumsy dancing and good earth, keeping the time and tasks of the seasons. Only here, does the author acquire the proper Ecclesiastical spirit where there is “the time of the seasons and the constellations / the time of milking and the time of harvest.”

In the single day of existence, he realizes there is always the hope of the new dawn. There is a preparation for the end, but even as he faces wrinkles and old age, Eliot says, “I am here / Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.”

Technique of Delight ( in"A Clear Midnight" )

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death, and the stars.

Walt Whitman, “A Clear Midnight”

From its first phrase, “A Clear Midnight” builds an aura of wonder. Whitman carefully develops the mood to lift the soul in contemplation. But, how does this short poem so easily move one to quiet meditation? The answer is elemental. Every letter is perfectly chosen to fit the mood of its line. After establishing the poem’s quiet, elevated mood in the first line, the next three lines move the reader from the excitement of activity to the peace of meditation. As a true master, Whitman uses the elements of sound and rhetorical devices to delight and inspire the reader’s own soul.

From the first clause, Whitman creates a hushed setting. Entirely lacking mute consonants, “This is thy hour O Soul” (line 1) impresses the reader with a quiet and gentle ambiance. While the liquid letters establish a peaceful tone for the poem, the words inspire a meditative mood in the reader. Whitman begins contemplation of abstract truth with a direct address to the intangible soul. Combined with soft sounds of the consonants and long vowels, the elevated language of “O Soul” works from the quiet setting and lifts the reader into meditation.

The rise is punctuated and confirmed by the emphasis on “flight.” In the first line, only “flight” ends with a consonantal mute, while the other words are full of vowels, liquids and semivowels. Even the other two stops in “into” and “wordless” are softened by vowels and gentler consonants. According to Mary Oliver, “Within a line, use of a mute sound is like a tiny swoon, a mini-caesura” (Oliver 61). As the reader is forced to pause at the end of the word, he is given time to picture the implied metaphor. The alliteration in “free flight” ties the words together and brings up the traditional metaphor of the soul as a dove. By using slightly more powerful letters in the second phrase, Whitman and further lifts the reader’s thoughts builds up his exhilaration.

The second line builds off this energy to move the reader out of pressures and distractions. With a long vowel in “away,” Whitman places a distance between the soul and the business of the day. This is also emphasized his avoidance of mentioning the word “soul” in the line. Without even a pronoun reference, the soul is completely disconnected from both the line and the demanding work it represents. Whitman establishes the day’s agitation with heavy mutes in “books” and “art.” The oppressive consonants build the feeling that if the soul does not escape, books and art will trample it. Whitman demonstrates this detachment with the line’s ending. As the d’s enclose “day erased,” one can see the whole day closed and put away just like a book. At midnight, the soul leaves all distractions and finishes the day. Even so, another mute consonant in “done” emphasizes the break from stress while the liquid n closes both the line and the reader’s mouth. Whitman builds up the antagonistic energy with the power of mutes and uses the visual absence of the soul to argue that, as in the line, the soul must break with the day’s pressure and fly away to the quiet of midnight to meditate.

After establishing the flight from the cares of the day, Whitman transitions back to the soul and its meditation by returning to the softer voiced “Thee” and “thou.” With the opening vowels and consonant clusters he presents a fall from the forceful energy in the second line. Mary Oliver explains that liquids “suggest softness, fluency, motion” while a mute “is an enforcer of the self-containment, and so the certainty, of what has been said” (Oliver 61). Thus, the rest of the line returns to the initial sense of quiet elation by swelling the energy from the opening th’s to the gentler g’s within “emerging” to the hard t’s closing “lovest best.” In the description of the soul, one word stands out from the parallel –ing suffixes. “Silent” is not only set apart from the balance, but its t ending also helps to elevate it above the rest of the line. Like “wordless” from the first line, it hits on the poem’s main point. When the soul is engaged in meditation, it has no words to describe the beauty it contemplates.

As it rebuilds a meditative mood, the third line also returns to a more cheerful attitude. Whitman develops the thoughtfulness by using increasingly more forceful words. Yet, even with more stops, as in “gazing” and “pondering,” only the t’s particularly stand out. As the line ends, several technical devices focus the reader’s attention on the last two words. Once again, the reader lingers over the words because of the mutes’ natural pause. Furthermore, the slight rhyme ties together “lovest best” and multiplies the impact of the pleasant word and positive superlative. These devices effect a happy feeling as the soul fully embarks on its journey of wondering meditation.

The poem’s upward flight reaches its crescendo in Whitman’s final line. Fittingly, each of the beginning three words has a natural punch from a consonantal mute. Since they are the substance of the soul’s contemplation, “night,” “sleep,” and “death” rightly stand out from the rest of the poem. The hard consonants, however, also set them apart from the rest of the line and emphasize their significance. But, the stops only symbolize the weight that each word carries in its own meaning and the silence inherent in each. Although the first few words of the line hit the reader with their quiet heaviness, Whitman does not leave the reader depressed and weighed down. Rather, he ends the poem on a pleasant note.

The very last word perfectly encapsulates Whitman’s excellent use of words and sounds. In the end, Whitman again lightens and elevates the mood by metaphorically lifting the reader’s gaze to “the stars.” The final word inspires the soul in its meditative hour to think of great things outside itself. Here is the full culmination of the poem as the reader saying the last a in “stars” physically drops his jaw like the soul in silent wondering meditation in “A Clear Midnight.” Thus, Whitman proves his masterful use of sounds and letters, which gives the poem its inspirational power and encourages the reader to join the soul’s contemplative wonder.

Works Cited

Oliver, Mary. Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Whitman, Walt. “A Clear Midnight.” From Leaves of Grass, 1900. Bartleby. 17 April 2006. http://www.bartleby.com/142/283.html

Happy Memories

When Father Carves the Duck

E. V. Wright

We all look on with anxious eyes
When father carves the duck,
And mother almost always sighs
When father carves the duck;

Then all of us prepare to rise,
And hold our bibs before our eyes,
And be prepared for some surprise,
When father carves the duck.

He braces up and grabs a fork
Whene'er he carves a duck,
And won't allow a soul to talk
Until he's carved the duck.

The fork is jabbed into the sides,
Across the breast the knife he slides,
While every careful person hides
From flying chips of duck.

The platter's always sure to slip
When father carves a duck,
And how it makes the dishes skip!
Potatoes fly amuck!

The squash and cabbage leap in space,
We get some gravy in our face,
And father mutters a Hindoo grace
Whene'er he carves a duck.

We then have learned to walk around
The dining room and pluck
From off the window-sills and walls
Our share of father's duck.

While father growls and blows and jaws
And swears the knife was full of flaws,
And mother laughs at him because
He couldn't carve a duck.


HT: To Kristen, who introduced me to this poem.

Ten reasons to be in academia

I will post something educational-philosophically-related one of these days, but a conversation earlier today inspired the following list (not in order of importance, necessarily):

1. Constant immersion in ideas (good, bad, or indifferent) from the wide range of human experience
2. Constant contact with people who also have constant contact with those ideas (meaning that one can actually converse with them instead of having to explain everything)
3. A heightened appreciation for ever-subtler jokes (mostly puns – and then there is Bales, which is not a purely intellectual reference)
4. Having the pleasure of talking about the stuff one enjoys every week while school is in session
5. Related to that, the pleasure of having people pay attention to what one says (mostly)
6. For those who tend towards the sadistic, there is the pleasure of wielding power embodied in the red pen
7. Professors have .edu email addresses. That sort of email address can get lots of fees lowered.
8. One can justify favorite books because “I’m doing research.” (provided one doesn’t have a mid-life crisis in the middle of a semester)
9. One can justify having shelves and shelves of books – they’re one’s livelihood, after all
10. One has access to ILL services!